Wednesday, 28 March 2012

So got the camera charged up and I notice the dial on the top of the camera......oh .... so thats why my macro photos where coming out rubbish! yes I've only been using the lens to focus and completely forgot to change the dial to 'close up' mode .... DOH!

So without further delay heres some proper good photos of the rest of my crew.

Bette Noire.

For some reason I went with a normal(ish) flesh tone on this model, which turned out very nice, with the nearly white flesh contrasting well with the black dress.

Necrotic Machine

Very pleased with the way this one turned out and it was relatively simple. Just one coat of GW Bronze, followed by an ink wash of 'Newton & Windsor's' Peat Brown, then drybrushed with bronze again, followed by a splattering of Turquoise around the edges and joints. Was probably the quickest Malifaux model I've painted.

and finally Molly :D

The model is absolutely fantastic and a real pleasure to paint. I had to paint molly in the week when i got home from holiday, because I didn't have a base for her until then (see previous blog post).
I tried very hard to do the best job I possibly could with this one and was fairly satisfied with the results. Trying to keep in with her background story I splashed some red blood on the front of her dress (She's prone to coughing fits of blood).

And since I've figured out the Camera, I guess I should provide a photo of the entire finished crew :D

Overall I think I did fairly well with the crew so far. Im looking forward to expanding in the near future with, Rogue Necromancy, Dead Doxies and the hulk himself that is AVATAR Seamus :D

Monday, 26 March 2012

After a great 2 weeks on holiday I managed to get a load of painting done.
I finished 3 Crooligans, Bette Noire and Necrotic Machine .... oh and I made a start and finished some Puppet wars models (but thats another story) :D
My original plan was to paint Molly on holiday, but due to my terrible post service, a batch of Micro Art cobblestone bases got lost in the post, so Molly was without her base :( .... Luckily the guys at Micro Art where kind enough to promise to dispatch a new order, in time for when I arrived home :D

So after an 8 hour drive me and my family arrived at our beautiful lodge in Argyl on the west coast of Scotland.

It didn't take long for us to settle in and on the 2nd night I dug out my models and paints.

First up for painting where the Crooligans. I wanted to do the models justice and give the figures a slightly more dirty appearance, whilst trying to keep in some bright colours, to make them stand out on the gaming table. For all 3 models I chose to keep to a basic palette of Red, Blue and Brown, with white bandages.

First up was this charming young man, who is obviously trying his best to hide some really bad dental problems from the other kids on the street.

Again I used a mix of watered down GW and Vallejo paints. I've found over the past few painting sessions, I am tending to use a GW base colour and then highlight up with the Vallejo. This is mainly due to my need to use up the GW paints before buying equivalent Vallejo, whilst the Vallejo dropper bottles are much easier to use when adding just a drop or two, in order to highlight up the base colour.

I'm really enjoying painting the Malifaux models, because the detail on them is absolutely stunning and concentrating on just one model or two at any one time, is giving me plenty more time to consider lots of more technical painting ideas.

Just to recap I always start from a black undercoat, followed with the base colour, then ink/wash shading. After applying the ink/wash, the model is left long enough for the ink/wash to dry properly. Once the shading is complete I reapply a base coat to most of the raised areas, carefully avoiding the recesses. This is then followed by a gradual build up of a lighter tone to the base coat. A couple of years ago I would probably have highlighted up just a couple of steps, now I'm finding that (especially with watered down paints) its actually fairly easy to tone up the highlight considerably more with perhaps 5-10 different tones for each colour.

So anyway here's a couple of photos of the other 2 Crooligans.

This fellow hasn't got dental issues like his mate, though his toes are looking an unhealthy shade of green ;)

And who can't love this little girl with a cute little teddy bear .... and a big knife!

Ill hopefully be updating again in the next few days, when I get the camera recharged (I was intending to do a massive post with the other models painted, but the camera battery ran out on me....typical)